by Misha Bell
I straighten so fast I nearly give my spine whiplash.
Of course.
It’s Vlad.
It wasn’t enough that he saw my vag last night; now he’s seen my butt too.
Does he at least like it?
I discreetly check his pants to see if Dracula is showing.
Yep. There’s a bulge. A nice, big one.
“My eyes are up here,” Vlad says.
Oh shit. Now he’s caught me staring at his crotch.
At work.
Jerking my head up, I catch my reflection in his glasses.
Surprise, surprise. My burning cheeks are redder than a rhesus monkey’s butt.
Like a case of déjà vu, Britney walks into the pantry at that very moment, her eyes jumping between me and Vlad.
“Lunch?” he asks me as soon as he spots her.
I nod, toss the wet towels into the garbage, and sprint out of there as if Britney has sprouted boils.
An elevator ride and a short walk later, I find myself in the same restaurant as the last time—except now I’m wiser and order the children’s menu right off the bat.
“The kids’ menu for me too,” Vlad tells the waiter.
“You don’t have to always get the same thing I get,” I say, still flushed and flustered from the tea bag incident. “Why should you miss out on tuna eyes, or cobra heart, or whatever else the chef has decided to cook up today?”
“We do have the sesos tacos you like,” the waiter chimes in.
My Spanish is so-so, but I’m pretty sure sesos is brains. Can someone say mad cow disease? At least I hope we’re talking cow and not, say, honey badger brains.
Vlad looks intrigued by the brains. I guess vampirism has gotten tiresome, and he’s ready to try being a zombie instead.
“Seriously, have the chef’s choice,” I say. “Otherwise I’ll feel bad.”
Vlad smiles. “If you’re sure.”
“I insist,” I say and mean it. The other alternative would be for me to get the special with him, and my stomach isn’t strong enough for that.
Vlad looks up at the waiter. “Since the lady insists, I’ll have the chef’s choice after all.”
“Of course.” The waiter pours us some wine and makes himself scarce.
Vlad raises his glass. “To your health.”
Do I look unwell? “Same to you.” I raise my wine ceremonially and take a dainty sip.
He puts down his glass.
I do the same, and get distracted by his fingers again—specifically, the urge to lick them.
“Can I ask a personal question?” he asks, snapping me out of my inappropriate reverie.
I quirk my left human-hair eyebrow wig. “Only if I can ask you two in return.”
His eyes glimmer with amusement. “Traditionally, these things go quid pro quo.”
“I scorn tradition,” I say with mock seriousness. “One personal question for the price of two, final offer.”
“But you will answer anything I ask,” he says. “Truth or Dare rules apply.”
“Deal,” I say and can’t help but feel I might regret it.
“Why did you break up with the book picker-upper?” he asks, his blue eyes narrowing like some truth detection machine.
I was right. I already regret the deal we made. “You mean Bob?”
“If that’s his name,” he says with noticeable distaste. “The person who couldn’t just get himself a new copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach.”
I take a bigger sip of my wine. “I didn’t break up with him. He broke up with me.”
Vlad’s eyes widen—which flashes me back to the other day when he was enjoying himself under my control. “Why would he ever do that?”
The way he puts that question makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Except I don’t want to answer that. Not even a little.
He pushes his glasses higher up his nose with one of those lickable fingers. “You want to back out of our quid pro quo?”
I lift my chin. “I already answered your question, so you owe me two answers.”
“You know what I meant to ask.” He picks up his water. “Do you really want to weasel out on a technicality?”
I take yet another sip of wine for bravery. “He thought I was unadventurous.”
Vlad chokes on his water. “Bullshit. You? You’re one of the most daring people I know.”
Whoa. I gape at him. “I am?”
“I’ve seen you do something daring each time we’ve done our testing—and what is that if not adventurous?”
“I guess.” I dubiously survey the nearby tables. “But I haven’t tried the food here.” Or asked him about the perfumed lady.
He waves his hand dismissively. “I bet you could eat it if you wanted to. But why? Food is meant to be enjoyed. If the picker-upper asked you to do something you didn’t feel like doing, that doesn’t make you unadventurous. His labeling you that makes him an asshole, though.”
The waiter brings the food, sparing me from needing to comment on what he said.
He’s not wrong, though. Bob is an asshole. In hindsight, I should’ve broken up with him. But I was busy with my new job at Binary Birch, and I simply didn’t have the mental bandwidth to analyze my relationship. I just kind of went with the flow, even though the sex was at best meh—a situation Bob tried to fix by pushing for ever-more-exotic bedroom acts that I just didn’t feel like doing with him. The final straw was after we came back from Prague, where we’d gone to the succubus show at the strip club—which I’d greatly enjoyed, by the way, due to high production values, topnotch costumes, and great acting. In any case, Bob decided that since I was down for seeing showgirls fist each other on stage, I might be cool with golden showers—and that was a hard no for me. And my hard no pissed off Bob—pun intended—who promptly broke up with me. Though sometimes it seems like he wants me back, because he keeps stopping by my place every once in a while to pick up the few items he left there.
Feeling myself getting riled up all over again—normally, I don’t even like thinking of Bob’s name—I focus on the food in front of me.
It’s the same as last time: yuca and yam fries in bechamel sauce, bluefin tuna fish sticks, quail nuggets, and the fancy cheese quesadillas.
I don’t look too much into Vlad’s selection. As long as it doesn’t crawl from his plate onto mine, I’m happy. In any case, my mind is still churning with unwelcome thoughts of my ex—and more annoyingly, of the mystery perfumed lady.
I really need to do something about the latter before the green monster drives me mad.
“So,” I say when I finish a fish stick and a nugget. “My turn to ask a question.”
Vlad slurps down something I can’t—and don’t want to—identify. “Shoot.”
“Why did your last relationship end?” I ask, pinning him with an intent stare. “Unless… you’re still in it.”
Chapter Twenty
There. Not very subtle, but hey.
He bites into what must be the brain-based taco, and I half expect his eyes to glaze over, zombie style.
“My last relationship was a couple of years ago,” he says after he swallows. “She broke up with me because we didn’t have much in common—her words, not mine.”
Not enough in common? That’s better than “couldn’t handle Dracula.”
“Since that breakup, I haven’t dated much,” he continues. “Not because I’m heartbroken or anything. I’ve just gotten very busy with my company and helping Alex with his.”
So not currently dating?
Must suppress glee.
This also means the perfume lady is, at most, a casual hookup—way better than a steady girlfriend, though still not ideal.
But, wait, is he still too busy for dating someone worthy… someone who might look like Snow White?
How obvious will it be if my second question is about that?
Transparent.
One corner of his mouth lifts in a devilish smile. “You have one more question. I’m curious to hear it.�
��
Here’s proof I’m not as daring as he thinks. Instead of asking if he’s ready to date now, specifically me, I blurt, “How come there’s no information about you online?”
The smile disappears. “Because I’m an extremely private person.”
I heap some fries onto my plate. “That’s not really an answer. Why are you so private?”
“Why is everyone else not more private?”
I grin. “Is that another question?”
He shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how many people didn’t get a job at my or my brother’s company based solely on the things they’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter? And that’s a benign example. A government can do something much worse than not hire you. They can put you in jail, or place you on some list, or who knows what else. To me, the fact that millions of people share their most private moments with the world of their own free will is completely nuts. An ego trip gone horribly wrong.”
“Wow. Tell me how you really feel,” I say, mentally cataloguing what I’ve posted on my social media. Some of it I should probably take down posthaste.
He bites into a questionable morsel that proceeds to ooze something green and sticky. “As the saying goes: knowledge is power. I don’t like giving up my power.”
I reach to scratch my eyebrow, then recall its precarious nature and scratch my forehead instead. “I get what you’re saying. To me, though, it sounds a little paranoid.”
This time, I’m pretty sure it’s a piece of blood sausage that he puts into his mouth. Hopefully made with pig’s blood, but you never know.
“How about a thought experiment?” he says after the sausage is a goner. “I give you a scenario, and you tell me how it makes you feel.”
“Sure.” I bite into a fry.
“You met with Sandra today.” This is said as a statement, not a question.
“Yeah, I did. So what?”
He leans forward. “How about if I told you that I witnessed your whole conversation through the security camera in the meeting room?”
I frown. “I’d say that was a little creepy, but hey, it’s your company. Now if you said you peep into the bathrooms, that would be a different story.”
“I’m not a perv.” As though to contradict his statement, he sticks his fork into something fermented—with a sticky, slimy texture that no food should ever have. “But now you’re beginning to get what I’m saying. That feeling you’d have if someone did put a camera into your bathroom is what I’m talking about.” Face tightening, he adds, “It’s particularly developed with me, and for a good reason.”
I freeze, another fry halfway to my mouth. “What do you mean? Did something happen?”
He puts down his fork. “My grandfather was executed based on a political joke a neighbor overheard.”
Holy shit. I was not expecting that.
“That’s terrible,” I say when I find my tongue. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. This was before I was even born, so I’m okay.”
Whew. I thought I’d stepped on a major landmine. “That wouldn’t happen here and now,” I say. “What you’re talking about was Soviet Russia—a totalitarian regime.”
He spears another morsel from his collection—something that looks like two jumbo shrimp glued together. “You never know who’ll get power and what they’ll do with it.”
“I guess. But you don’t even have your picture on the company website. Or a bio. That’s another level of caution altogether.”
He devours the shrimp-looking thing so appetizingly I almost want to try it too. Putting down his fork, he says, “A while back, a local paper wrote an article about my parents’ restaurant. It helped the business, at first. Then, one day, racketeering mob types walked into the place, recognized my mom, and forced her to empty the safe at gunpoint. It was thanks to that article that they knew what she looked like, and that the restaurant was doing well.” As he says this, his eyes get flinty, hinting at how he got his Impaler moniker.
The bite I was chewing feels stuck in my throat. I think I’m beginning to understand his obsession with privacy. If that had happened to my family, I’d be paranoid also.
“That must’ve been terrifying for your mom,” I say, fighting the urge to put my hand over his. “Did the police catch the bastards?”
His mouth tightens. “Not exactly.”
“They got away?”
“Not exactly.”
I stare at him expectantly.
He sighs and sweeps his gaze over the nearby tables, as if checking for eavesdroppers. Then, in a lowered voice, he says, “Someone traced the criminals to their Russian social media accounts. Like the rest of the public, the gangsters weren’t big on privacy, so they openly discussed criminal activity in their messages. The FBI got the translated transcripts of that communication through an anonymous tip. Just as the mobsters were taken into custody, their offshore bank account got mysteriously wiped out.”
Whoa. Is he saying he robbed the robbers? If so, that’s pretty badass. I want to pry into it deeper, but he doesn’t look inclined to elaborate. If anything, he seems like he regrets saying what he did.
Not wanting him to worry, I raise my hands theatrically. “You win. I almost feel like shutting down my Facebook and Instagram. But if I do, how will I stay up to speed on the health of everyone’s cats?”
His expression warms by a few degrees, and he stabs his fork into another morsel on his plate. “You own a guinea pig. Cats are the enemy.”
“True, true.” I watch as he eats it with even greater gusto. Finally, I can’t help myself. “Okay, I think you’ve inspired me to be daring and try something from the chef’s selection. Assuming you don’t mind sharing?”
He smiles and gestures at his spread. “Be my guest.”
As I scan it all, my burst of enthusiasm begins to wane. “What would you recommend?”
“That.” He points at the glued jumbo-shrimp thing. “They’re divine today.”
Right. That was the item he seemed to savor the most.
I narrow my eyes at the thing but draw a blank. “What is it? Or is it better if I don’t know?”
He pushes the plate toward me. “It would be more daring if you did know and ate it anyway.”
I spear one of the things with my fork. “Fine. Hit me. What is it?”
“Frog legs,” he says. “French style—fried with parsley and garlic sauce.”
Right. Now that he’s said it, I can see it.
Not giving myself much time to deliberate, I stick the two legs dangling off the fork into my mouth.
The explosion of yummy flavor almost makes me moan in pleasure. It’s like someone took the best qualities of chicken and fish and mixed them together.
He watches me intently.
“It’s good,” I say as soon as I can speak again. “I never exactly liked frogs, face to face that is, and wouldn’t pet one, but I guess I can eat them.”
And they’re not as gross as snail eggs, that’s for sure.
He nods. “I wouldn’t pet a sea urchin, but they are delicious.”
“Makes sense. Next time, I might just get an order of these.”
“You should. Also, if you like French-inspired cuisine, you might enjoy the fare at my parents’ restaurant. Speaking of…” He rubs the stubble on his chin. “Remember that party my brother invited you to?”
“The 1000 Devils’ anniversary?”
“That’s the one. It’s tonight, and my family has been pestering me to go.”
I blink. “So go. They’re your family.”
His gaze is intent on my face. “Would you join me? My brother did want you there, remember?”
“I think he wanted me to bring you, not the other way around.” I sneak a worried glance at the more dubious items on his plate.
“The food will be much less exotic than here,” he says, discerning my concern. “The most unusual thing on my parents’ menu is probably caviar. Regular black caviar, that is—and you don’t
have to eat it.”
Is he asking me out on a date?
No. His brother invited me first.
Still. This sounds fancy. And it’s Vlad who’s now pushing me to go.
His lips curve into another wicked smile. “How about we make another deal? I will go only if you go with me.”
“Hey. That’s not fair. That’s like some weird emotional blackmail.”
He cocks his head. “You’re not the only one who can play hardball.”
“But… tonight?” I frantically glance down at my work outfit. “I don’t have anything fancy to wear.”
“How about I get you something?”
“I’m not sure—”
“If you don’t like the clothes, you can opt not to go.”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “You’re pushy.”
His eyes gleam. “I go for what I want.”
My throat suddenly feels dry, so I sip my water.
“Come on,” he says. “Yes or no?”
“Maybe,” I say, figuring I can always flake because of the outfit. “Now, can we please talk about something else?”
He looks satisfied, smug even. I guess he’s decided I’m going. “Well… there was an interesting computational problem today. Want to hear about it?”
Huh. Does he know about my interest in transferring to the development department? Could be. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the same mailing list as the rest of them—and could’ve seen Sandra’s email about my ambitions.
“Sure,” I say. “What was it?”
“Have you ever heard of the Scunthorpe problem?”
I shake my head.
“Scunthorpe is the name of a town in England, and citizens of that town couldn’t create accounts with AOL back in the day because the name contains the substring ‘cunt,’ which activated AOL’s profanity filters.”
I grin, which spurs him on to provide a bunch more examples of the same issue, such as when someone couldn’t register a domain called shitakemushrooms.com because of the first four letters—never mind that the proper spelling of that particular mushroom has an extra “i” that would’ve fixed the problem. Or when a doctor by the last name of Libshitz was not able to register an email. My favorite is how the Montreal Urban Community website was blocked by web filtering software because their French name was Communauté urbaine de Montréal, which meant their acronym and therefore website address was “cum.”
